Bowling Trouble: It’s Better to Laugh than Cry

Not everything on my 50 for 50 list is difficult, new or designed to push me out of my comfort zone.  Some of the items are there to help me relive experiences from the past or try things that I haven’t tried for years. A few weeks ago, we tackled one of those.  We went bowling.

I am now three months into this list and have been thinking for a week or so now that I need to get serious about knocking some of these off.  Bowling seemed easy.  I know how to bowl.  There is a bowling alley nearby.  It’s cheap.  It would be fun.  It seamed easy.

As Michelle, the boys and I drove to the alley, I was reminded of the many Saturday afternoons I spent sitting on the couch watching the Professional Bowlers Tour on ABC. I was one of those kids.  If you don’t know who Jo Petraglia or Earl Anthony are, you weren’t one of “those kids”.  I also was reminded that I come from a long line of bowlers, albeit female ones.  My grandmother bowled every Friday morning.  My mom did it as well for a while.  There were a couple of years that she signed my sister and I up with a league.  I must have been seven or eight.  I wonder if the little wooden bowling pin I received at the end of that first year rewarding me for my high score of “66” still is in a box someplace?  I doubt it.

The point is that I know how to bowl and it should be fun. It was fun.  My form came back quickly.  By the time we started our second game, I felt that my form was pretty good.  In the fourth frame I bowled a strike.  I was quite proud and was feeling pretty good about myself.  Then… I felt something else… a slight breeze on the inner portion of my right thigh.  It   was the middle of  February.  It was cold out.  I was not wearing shorts.  I looked down to see that my jeans had ripped along the seam from my knee all the way up to the zipper!

It took me a second to comprehend the predicament I was in.  I had to make a decision quickly about how I would respond to the situation that had opened up before me. The way I saw it, I had only two choices.  I could respond negatively or I could respond positively.  Now, situations exactly like this one don’t present themselves often, but we do have to confront our reactions to things all the time and the question that always confronts us is are we going to respond to them in a positive manner or a negative one  On that Saturday afternoon, I decided to embrace the faulty inseam of my jeans with all of the positivity that I could muster.  It took only a moment, and I laughed.  I discreetly pulled the flappy part of my pants up and walked back to my chair as gracefully as I could.   I couldn’t hear any laughter.  I looked around to see if anyone was gawking at me or calling the cops about the guy in lane three who was exposing himself.

There were no gawks and no one seemed to be frantically calling 911.  The teenagers and the young  family in the lanes next to us didn’t seem to notice.  In fact, neither the boys nor Michelle seemed to be giving me any attention either.  I was determined to remain positive.  I called Michelle over and had her take a look at my damaged pants.  It took her a bit of time to truly understand my predicament.  I was laughing, so she was free to laugh as well.  What do we do now?

I decided that I was going to finish the game.  I took off the flannel shirt I was wearing and tied it around my waist and bowled my next frame.  That game turned out to be the mos fun game I ever bowled.  My score suffered because we were laughing so much.  With each ball I threw down the lane, a little more of my inseam would open up.  By the time we were done, the right leg of my pants had almost completely pulled apart and we had a great time.

I thought about saving those pants, delcairing them to be my “bowling pants” and using them every time we go bowling from now on.  We decided to go straight to the store and exchange them instead.  Needless to say, we had no trouble explaining to the clerk at the store that I needed another pair of pants.  Again, lots of laughs were had by all at the store.  If I had chosen to be upset by the ripping of my pants, bowling wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun as we did.

As I am working my way through this 50 for 50 list I have come to enjoy the process of working through the activities almost as much as the activities themselves.  Maybe that’s the point. Embrace the list and enjoy every aspect of it.  If you rip your pants, don’t worry, laugh and continue bowling.

Maybe I should get a pair of these.

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